Anger and antidote of anger in Buddhism

The real purpose of Buddhism Dharma is to help transforming the negative emotions into positive emotions, just because they make us unhappy which is why we have been suffering for all these lives in Samsara. Anger is one of the negative emotions that actives quite often in our daily life.

The Buddha’s teachings are like a prescription in which he explained clearly the nature and cause of these negative emotions, how to eliminate them and the medication needed for such each mental illness and how is the method of use.

And all the teachings of Buddha shows the method which helps us  to eliminate  those negative emotions and high  are mental illness and just as reading the prescription does not cure the disease, only reading Buddhas’ teachings is not enough to remove negative emotions like anger completely. So we must practice those teachings of Buddha. And with the appropriate application of the medication like compassion practice, wisdom practice, patience practice, moralty practice and so forth. We can find ultimate happiness.

 Regarding anger, the best medication is patience practice. Lama Nawang Kunphel has given an actual simple method to practice it. That is thinking the negative results or disadvantages of being angry and concentrating on the advantages of not being angry. To be able to concentrate in thinking two aspects of being angry disadvantages and not being angry advantages, based on his own experience, Lama has introduced 8 points that he practiced since he was still a child until now and achieved the expected results. Those are:

1. If you get angry you will lose your values, you will lose your respect and reputation.
2. If you get angry, it not only makes you unhappy but it destroys the happiness of those people who are so beloved to you.
3. When you have the anger in you, it is like a fire, it burns you.
4. If you have that anger again and again, it creates a sort of loneliness and you lose your friends and your good relation.
5. When you are angry, you lose your capability to analyze the good and the bad, your analytical mind, your decision making ability, your intellectual brain is not going to work anymore.
6. When you are angry, people don’t feel you’re nice, people don’t think you are friendly enough to be around
7. When you’re so angry, it breaks the long-term relationship.
8. When you’re so angry, you want to hurt other, that is only for your ego.

And the daily 8-point practice does not take time, just a concentrative meditation within 2 minutes of thinking each point, maybe twice per day in the morning and in the evening, is enough. Therefore daily we just have two meditations about 30 minutes or once within 14 minutes if we are busy. We can see the big change for about at least two weeks even just two – three days we start to see our anger transforming toward positive.

So, right in this life, if we have no anger, if we can control our own anger, we will be peaceful. That’s exactly what Buddha said:  “Transformation is what you’re needed”.

If we love ourself, if we really have the compassion to ourself, then we should to remove the pain that can come from negative actions, negative actions come from emotions like anger. So to remove the anger, we need to practice patience, the way to practice patience is these eight points.